Chapter 50
They made it across the mountain pass, knees scraped and bloody, breath coming in short draws.
Maggie glanced back to check on Liz, who was sitting down, head tipped up to the night, the beam of her torch disappearing into blackness. “You okay?” Maggie called.
“Yes . . . I think so . . . You got me across. I couldn’t have done it without you . . .”
Maggie felt a swell of pride rising through the exhaustion. She would never have believed herself capable of crossing that mountain pass—but she had done it. And she’d led the others, too.
“Where’s the cabin?” asked Joni, who was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, moving from foot to foot to keep warm.
Liz pushed to her feet, saying, “I thought it would be right here.” She scanned the beam of her torch across the empty trail ahead.
Maggie heard an eerie groaning behind her—a faint wailing that was there, then gone. The wind felt alive up here—twisting at her hair, seeping through her clothes, scaling down her neck. “What was that?”
The others inched closer. “I don’t know,” Helena said, her voice edged with fear.
The noise came again, like a low growl.
Maggie swung her torch around—but the beam met nothing but blackness.
“Let’s check for a signal again,” Helena said.
Joni took out her phone, hands trembling and bloodless.
As the screen flared to life, Maggie could see the battery was down to 10 percent and there were no bars of signal. Joni dialed anyway, holding the phone tight to her ear to block out the wind.
The rest of them waited, listening to the howl of wind against rock.
Maggie’s toes were numb in her hiking boots, and she curled and released them to try to keep the blood moving.
“No connection,” Joni said flatly. She turned off the phone, and that tiny flame of hope was snuffed.
Liz, rubbing her hands together, said, “We need to keep moving. The cabin’s got to be close.”
They trudged on, Maggie scanning the trail with her torch.
With no ceiling or walls to protect them, the dark wind felt ravenous, reaching for them.
She had the ominous sensation that something was lurking nearby.
She kept the torch trained to the ground in front of her feet and then would occasionally lift it, streaking the beam through the night, as if she’d catch something stalking them.
At the rear, Helena used her torch to scan over the mountain peak, hunting for a sign of the cabin. There were no stars or moon to help navigate, thick layers of cloud closing out the light.
Maggie pushed a cold hand into her coat pocket and felt the cool slip of Karin’s bracelet.
She remembered Vilhelm telling them that Blafjell was where Karin had last been seen.
He’d described it as a thin place. Something beyond the limit of our understanding.
That feeling of unease, of not being alone, that isn’t immediately explicable.
Again, a faint moaning noise lifted from the mountain, the wind turning ever colder. Goose bumps rose across her arms and spread down the back of her neck. It was as if she could feel someone watching them.
She was so focused on the sensation that she must have failed to look where she was putting her feet.
Rock moved beneath her, a sudden destabilizing lurch as solid ground began to shift.
She felt a strange, cold grip around her ankle, as if an icy hand had yanked her off balance.
The thick soles of her hiking boots made it hard to feel the ground, to grip for purchase, and her ankle turned.
She felt it—the stretch and ping of something in her ankle. She screamed at the piercing, sheer pain.
The torch flew from her grip as she put out her hands. Then she was down on the ground, landing hard. She lay there, the wind knocked out of her.
Liz was at her side. “Maggie?”
“My ankle!” she gasped. “I went over on it.”
“What happened?” Helena asked, crouching beside her.
“Must have tripped . . .” Maggie scrabbled for her torch, then used it to search for the offending rock or stone, but when she looked—there was nothing there.
She recalled the feeling of something tugging hard at her ankle.
She swallowed back her fear. Said, “We need to get to the cabin . . .” Sucked in another breath. “Help me up.”
Joni took one arm, Helena the other, and they hauled Maggie to her feet.
Liz took the torch beam and directed it at Maggie’s ankle. “Can you put any weight on it?”
She tested, but a shock of pain ripped through her ankle. Even the weight of her hiking boot felt awful. “None!”
“Just lean on us,” Joni said, through chattering teeth. “We must be close.”
Arms hooked around Joni and Liz, she lurched on, teeth gritted against the pain.
A gust of wind wheeled over the mountain, shouldering into them. They clung close, muscles clenched.
Liz raised the torch beam, which traveled further down the rocky path, revealing only blackness.
They were all silent, watching as she swept the light again down the length of the trail, traveling over huge rocky boulders.
“Wait! Stop!” Joni cried. “There! Go back!”
Slowly, Liz drew the beam back toward them.
“Oh!” Maggie heard herself cry. There, only fifty meters away now, was a small wooden cabin, clinging to the edge of the mountain.